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A year ago, China lifted draconian COVID restrictions that were an anvil around the neck of the economy and placed unprecedented controls on a society that, for the previous four decades, had grown accustomed to expanding personal freedoms, not shrinking them
Definitely not true for folks who use digital privacy tools
I mean, their vaccine is just saltwater and spit just like the Russian one. And they didn't let anyone catch it at all (or at least they tried) wich means there isn't a natural resistance either.
So in the end they completely fucked their economy (and the economy of other countries with it... But thats a different story) and just postponed the unavoidable outbreak of covid making it essentially worse than any other country. Oh and thanks to the new outbreaks covid has definitely mutated a lot...
"When I was coming in '82, people took pictures with cars and paid for the picture
What the hell does that mean?
Cars were so uncommon to people outside of Beijing that they would pay to have their picture taken with a car as a memento or proof to others that they saw a car and they do exist. Motor vehicle production didn't really pick up until the early 90's. Before that, manufacturers were only making a couple hundred thousand cars per year in the entire country.
At least that's how I interpreted it after reading about the Chinese auto market history on Wikipedia and combining it with my own personal history with computers while growing up in a rural town in the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_China